The Year of the Seventh Toll
by GinnyRules
Summary: When they kiss it is an unexpected symphony; a tripwire that swipes their feet out from beneath them without warning; a roar of cresting waves in an ocean storm... She grins. "I don't want to talk." ... "That's a first."


**A/N: **Hello all and welcome to the most massive one-shot I've ever written. I know you guys are waiting for an update on "Ash and Fire" but I missed Draco terribly and I couldn't get this one out of my head. The plot was sparked by my impression that masked balls in the wizarding world should be about more than just pretty dresses. I mean, these people can do magic! I don't normally delve a lot into the psychological aftereffects of war and trauma in my fics, so I thought I'd try it. Stylistically, this is also pretty different from anything else I've done, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. The epigraph is from De Béranger and translates to "Her heart is a suspended lute; When touched it resounds." It is also used in Poe's "House of Usher" which I interpret as being about loneliness and isolation. Make of that what you will. Cheers, and happy reading! (Also, PS, disclaimer, I own nothing.)

* * *

**THE YEAR OF THE SEVENTH TOLL**

_Son coeur est un luth suspendu  
Sitot qu'on le touche, il résonne_

* * *

May 2nd, 2004 – 11:59 pm

Every eye in the Atrium turns to follow the progress of the great clock's needle as it edges ever closer to the hour of the toll. There are murmurs of excitement from each corner as the defeated wait enthusiastically to unmask the victorious. Only two figures still remain shrouded in mystery. She, calm and poised; he, tense and still as though carved from marble.

"Ten sickles on one of the Weasley lot," wheezes Mundungus Fletcher to everyone in the vicinity. "Give yeh good odds. How's 'bout it?"

He is shushed by several irritable witches at once, and subsides into silent beseeching of those nearest, who ignore him.

At the very back of the room Harry Potter stands a little apart from the crowd, next to the Minister for Magic, who keeps glancing impatiently at a solid gold pocket watch as though he can speed up time by sheer force of will.

The mystery woman on the raised dais at the center of it all shuffles her feet self-consciously. It is a brief flicker of movement that lasts barely a second, and goes unnoticed by the majority of onlookers. But Harry Potter smiles. He knew it was her.

Then his face falls. If it _is_ her, then who is the other man?

He waves his wand discreetly behind his back and a dazzling silvery stag shoots from the end with a message bound for the hills beyond the village of Ottery Saint Catchpole. But it is too late. The great needle reaches the twelfth star on the clock face and the enchanted tower begins to chime the midnight hour. Twelve chimes, and on the twelfth the identities of the winners will be revealed.

On the eleventh chime the masked man reaches up prematurely, shocking the assembly, and waves his wand, vanishing his disguise.

* * *

December 24th, 2000

It happens, that first time, because of an accidental explosion in Experimental Charms. This is what they tell themselves.

It is an excuse: it is all they have.

On Christmas Eve night, long after the revelry of the Ministry's interdepartmental party has come to a close, a lonely member of the Committee for Experimental Charms remains in his office, perhaps because he is not expected elsewhere. He attempts a spell that backfires rather spectacularly, causing the floor to fall through. Thus the ceiling of Hermione Granger's office in Magical Creatures caves in and she is showered with rubble as she dives behind her desk, throwing her arms over her head.

The only other person remaining in the Ministry at this hour is a junior Unspeakable. Diverted on his way to drop off a report to the Pest Advisory Board by the tremendous crash heard in Hermione's office, he draws his wand instinctively and points it at the remains of the tiny, ravaged room with shaking hands.

It is one thing to describe such events and quite another thing to live them. So to the young man and woman in question it seems that this incident, and the ensuing chaos, occur in the space of a few seconds. Before the junior Unspeakable knows what is happening, Hermione has leapt out at him with wildfire in her eyes and is brandishing her wand, halfway through uttering a powerful curse. She stops herself at the very last second upon properly catching sight of him, and her mouth falls comically open in shock. The junior Unspeakable's hands are trembling so badly at this point that he nearly drops his wand.

"Malfoy," she says haltingly. It is not a question, not a condemnation. It is barely a recognition.

"Granger." He looks back at her and sees his own thoughts mirrored in her eyes. They are both back at Hogwarts, surrounded by the screams and the blood and the bright lights of battle, steeped in the relentless thrum of death.

"I—I thought for a second... something had—" She stops short, apparently unaware that her hand has jumped up to trace the thin, pale scar near the base of her neck, last remnant of an encounter with the late, unlamented Bellatrix Lestrange.

"Nearly gave me heart failure," mutters Draco Malfoy with much less rancor than intended, so that it comes out flat and almost pitiful.

"It wasn't me," Hermione points out.

Draco looks up through the hole in the ceiling. "Experimental Charms. Idiots are going to wind up killing someone. Shouldn't the damn lot of them have gone home by now?"

She looks at him curiously. "Why are you still here, then?"

"Why are you?" he returns, not meeting her gaze.

She mutters something about being terribly behind and having so much work to do, but the pallor of her skin and the teeth marks on her ragged fingernails tell a different story. What she does not say is how stifling the silence in the Burrow grows each year as every pair of eyes darts without fail to the hand of Molly Weasley's famous clock bearing the name 'Fred Weasley,' forever pointing towards 'Home.' She does not explain how she has braved the tense conversations and the stilted well-wishes every year until this one, for Ron's sake, and that this time is simply one too many. She does not need to say these things.

Hermione does not ask Draco again why he is there so late. There is no need to belabor the fact that she knows his parents sit in their ruined Manor, firmly entrenched in the bitterness of defeat, or that practically everyone else he knows is in Azkaban.

There is a fleeting look of relief in his eyes when she passes over any mention of these things that makes him look much younger for a moment, and it is the summation of all that she misses: simple emotions, unmarred by loss. Impulsively she conjures a pair of glasses filled with deep amber liquid, a marvelous substitute for the oblivion of dreamless sleep, to which they have all grown accustomed since the nationwide shortage of sleeping potions brought on by overwhelming demand.

He arches an eyebrow, and the illusion is broken. He is as a pale and wan as she is.

"A nightcap," she says, too tired to marvel much at the strangeness of raising a glass without irony to share a toast with Draco Malfoy.

They drink, welcoming the fire that stings their throats and blots out the never-ending mental reel of glassy eyes and cold, limp hands.

This is the first night that it happens. But there are many instances, long before, that make up the fragmented yet somehow unavoidable preamble.

* * *

May 25th, 1998

The first time Hermione sees Draco again after the war she is standing in a long queue in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, awaiting her turn with an examiner for her Charms NEWT. The Hall is also the first place she ever saw him, sneering contemptuously up at her while the Sorting Hat was placed on her head. She had grown used to that sneer over time, the way one adjusts to a creaking step by shifting weight from one foot to another until the motion is as natural and instinctive as breathing, and it is jarring to see him without it. For a moment she almost wishes it would come back.

His eyes lock with hers across the Hall and his face registers nothing but panic. He does not want to have to think about what she, Harry, and Ron did for him and weigh it against the disdain he has been taught to feel for her from birth. He makes an odd, jerking motion with his head that is not quite a nod and looks away.

Hermione has long since resigned herself to the fact that all of the other pupils in her year have chosen to throw away their opportunity for a final term at Hogwarts and a comprehensive set of qualifications. She cannot really begrudge Harry and Ron their far-flung hunt, at the behest of Kingsley Shacklebolt, for the last of the wayward Death Eaters. Yet she cannot imagine herself recovering from the treacherous aftershocks of war anywhere else besides here at Hogwarts, as she prepares herself to take the NEWT's alongside Ginny and Luna. The sight of Malfoy—the idea of his turning up for something as mundane as NEWT's—brings back a flood of memories that she has managed to shut inside a small compartment in her mind all year. Memories of the times _before_, when she used to do things like cheer Harry on during Quidditch games or visit Hogsmead village to pursue selfish amusements. Things she denies herself now, because the Quidditch pitch and the streets of Hogsmead are filled with ghosts.

She stares at Draco for a long time after he has looked away, and Ginny notices. Mistaking Hermione's expression for one of anger, she looks over and her lips thin when she notices him. She raises her wand. Perhaps she is thinking of Fred. Nevertheless, Hermione places a hand on her arm and shakes her head. Draco, who had looked around warily upon glimpsing the drawing of a wand out of the corner of his eye, sees Hermione murmur a few words of caution to Ginny, and he glares back at them with such helpless bitterness that Hermione, stricken, only receives a hundred and ten percent on her exam rather than the one hundred and forty she might have otherwise achieved.

She finds him after the exam, slumped against a wall just outside the Great Hall eating dinner in solitude. He has made no attempt to join the Slytherin table, where no one will so much as glance at him because he is the only person in the whole Hall who wears long sleeves in spite of the stifling heat of early summer. They know why.

"What do you want?" he says as Hermione approaches. She thinks it is the closest thing he can manage to 'Hello.'

The sound of his voice is a welcome surprise, because she can almost hear Ron and Harry's voices lurking behind it. And Ron has changed, but he is still Ron, so his letters are scant. And Harry's efforts at correspondence are directed mostly at Ginny. Hermione finds that she craves echoes of the past more than she has realized.

"As Head Girl I'm meant to make sure you've got the passwords to your old dormitory for the duration of your stay," she tells him. It isn't strictly speaking true, but no other excuse makes itself readily available, so it will have to do.

He gives a short, humorless laugh. "I won't be rooming here."

"Why?"

It seems as though he is going to snap at her, and then thinks better of it. There is nothing in his answer but defeat.

"I'm staying at the Inn above the Pumpkin Seed. They've... made it clear they won't have me. In the dungeons."

"The Pumpkin Seed?" Hermione repeats incredulously, invigorated by the familiarity of his manner, the unconscious way he juts out his chin when he is displeased with something. "The rooms there are supposed to be dreadful. Surely the Hog's Head..."

"Are you asking why I'm not staying under Aberforth Dumbledore's roof, Granger?"

She could curse herself then, wondering what has happened to her legendary presence of mind. But since the war her thoughts have had a way of growing scattered at unexpected junctures. It is frightening not to have control over the thing that has always been her greatest asset, largely because it reminds her of the powerless feeling of writhing under Bellatrix's wand on the Malfoys's drawing room floor. Draco would not meet her eyes then, either. She remembers in vivid detail the way his haggard, gray skinned face seemed to sink in upon itself as she screamed.

It occurs to Hermione that she has not answered his question and she drags herself back to reality with difficulty to find Draco watching her with something—perhaps it would be optimistic to call it remorse. Yet it is something she has not seen before, and she knows with calm certainty that he is remembering that nightmarish day with Bellatrix as well.

"Why didn't you sell us out?" Wanting to break the tension, she says the first thing that comes to mind, realizing a moment too late that her chosen topic will have the opposite effect. His face falls.

"Not just the day the Snatchers caught us," she specifies quickly. "In fifth year when I lured Umbridge into the forest with that story about Dumbledore's secret weapon. It was obvious to everyone in that room with half a brain that I wasn't really crying. You must have known. But you never said anything. And again last year when Ginny and the others in the DA were meeting in secret. You had to know they were using the Room of Requirement, but you didn't tell the Carrows. And you didn't really cooperate with the Snatchers that caught us either. You never sold us out."

Draco is silent for so long that Hermione nearly turns to walk away, disappointed. Before she can he mutters, so low that she barely hears him, "Did it occur to you I might just be a coward?"

Hermione whips around, dismayed and—it is still possible, then, to feel this way—enthralled at the discovery of this person lurking under the veneer of contempt that is Draco Malfoy. She thinks perhaps she is gaping unabashedly, and simultaneously they both seem to realize that they have ventured too quickly and too deep into the realm of understanding. It is then, at last, that the sneer reappears, though it is a feeble caricature of its old counterpart.

"Stick to memorizing the library, Granger," he says, getting to his feet. "Don't look for grand gestures where there aren't any."

His hand delves into the pocket of his robes as he walks away, toying with his wand in imitation of the nervous habit she herself has been unable to break since her year on the run. A habit made possible, she muses, because her beloved wand, which had been left at Malfoy Manor after the ordeal with the Snatchers, had been returned to her by owl post the week after the battle at Hogwarts. It had been sent anonymously, but she had recognized the handsome Eagle Owl with the haughty glower.

"Thank you for returning my wand," she calls after him, and he pauses for a moment before walking on.

* * *

May 2nd, 2004 – 11:38 pm

Gold streamers hover ostentatiously near a squat, gray-haired woman's head as she stands with her back to the Fountain of Magical Brethren, attempting to make herself inconspicuous. A thin man with untidy black hair and glasses sneaks up behind her, grinning.

"Hem, hem," says Harry Potter, tapping her on the shoulder.

The face of Dolores Umbridge swivels quickly to look at him, and Ginny Weasley smiles through it, eliciting in Harry a strange mixture of revulsion and affection.

"Who might this be, then?" he asks mockingly.

She holds out her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I've been caught! But don't ask me to tell you how I managed to get a hold of her hairs for the Polyjuice. You'd have me arrested for sure."

Harry laughs. "Come on then, let's get you signed into the register and looking like yourself again. Seeing you like this is messing with my head in the most disturbing way."

Together they walk to a table near the central dais that has been erected for the purposes of the Ball. The moment Ginny scratches her name at the bottom of a long list in the heavy leather-bound guestbook on the table, both quill and book glow momentarily gold and she transforms back to her rather taller, slimmer, red haired self.

The book, along with the annual Masked Ball itself, are a tradition now dating back seven years to the anniversary of the death of Lord Voldemort. It is rumored to have been implemented by Harry Potter himself in celebration of the fall of the Dark Lord, though Harry knows this to be wildly false. In truth the idea was first put forth by a rather senile old member of the Minister's support office while Kingsley Shacklebolt was away on business with a Turkish ambassador. In the fashion of all brazenly ridiculous ideas, it gained immediate support, and was presented as a means of raising funds for the monumentally overextended Saint Mungo's hospital. In order to foster an appreciation for the diversity of magical heritage, invitees were encouraged to disguise themselves as famous historical figures, from Helga Hufflepuff to Uric the Oddball to Herpo the Foul. Half of the gold raised by the general price of entrance was donated to Saint Mungo's, while the other half was awarded as prize money to any witch or wizard who, when the clock tower tolled in announcement of the evening's end, had yet to be correctly identified by anyone in attendance.

The rather broad interpretation of the term 'historical figures' employed by many of the younger attendees to the Ball's first installment made the event an instant success. Ginny Weasley's appearance as Gilderoy Lockart, thanks to a truly redoubtable wig and a questionably obtained, teetering stack of signed photographs, was still the stuff of delighted gossip seven years later. Ginny, along with several others including Lee Jordan and a slowly recovering George Weasley, had become well-known for their costumes which sought not to win the prize money but seemingly to offend as many senior Ministry officials as possible.

Amused as he was by Ginny's antics and her relentless, unflagging spirit, Harry had found the lavish decorations chosen by the resigned Minister's support staff to be in poor taste, and had conspicuously refused to attend the second Ball. Ron and Hermione had followed suit, much to the Ministry's outrage and the public's disappointment. This year however, with his promotion as deputy head of the Auror Office looming, Harry had unfortunately been unable to avoid attending. His costume had been minimal, and as he had forgotten to vanish his scar he had been spotted within eight seconds of his arrival.

"Hermione's name's not on here," Ginny remarks, scanning the list of names inscribed above her own. "Nor's Ron's or Luna's. Or Draco Malfoy's... If bloody Malfoy wins the prize money I might have to hex him."

"Luna's in Argentina researching Corpulent Phillibuzzers," says Harry, "and Hermione wasn't planning on coming. She said she'd be up in her office finishing up a report for Chiswick. Ron came as that Chaser bloke, Gorgovitch, didn't he? I thought he'd already been spotted."

Ginny rolls her eyes. "No, mum ran out of orange to knit Ron an outfit and he got in a snit about it. He was in a really foul mood when I last saw him. And," she adds more seriously, "Hermione's not in her office. I stopped by Magical Creatures to drop in on Rolf Scammander and it was empty."

Harry frowns. "Where is she, then?"

* * *

December 24th, 2000

There is plaster in Hermione's hair still, that first night, and the moonlight streaming through the dusty window throws the shadows under Draco's eyes into sharp relief so that he looks bruised, even ill. The gin makes their heads swim and little by little all of Hermione's sensible, rational reasons for persevering with an often despondent, irritable, frankly unreasonable Ron seem to fly away. Yes, she too is unresponsive, even insensitive at times. Yes, she need only ride out the worst of it until they have all taken the time and space to heal. Yet suddenly these arguments seem childish and unlikely.

They sit in the ruined office after the man from Experimental Charms has fled, drinking and discussing subjects of little consequence—anything that will not open up old wounds. She feels an odd sort of twist in her chest when he chokes on a sentence, biting back the word 'Mudblood' that has slipped off his tongue out of habit. She wants to tell him about the grudging respect she felt when he was the only other student in Professor Vector's class who was not made to retake Arithmancy tests after receiving a failing grade.

Draco does not know quite how he ends up sitting so unnaturally close to her as the night draws on. There is a blissful swoop of amusement in his stomach as she recounts cursing Marietta Edgecomb to be branded as a sneak for her betrayal of the DA. He wants to tell her how he lay in bed for hours after the Yule Ball in their fourth year with her image swooping through his head, harder than he had ever been in his life and furiously refusing to give himself any relief.

When they kiss it is an unexpected symphony; a tripwire that swipes their feet out from beneath them without warning; a roar of cresting waves in an ocean storm. They cling to each other in desperation and they are both soon feverish with longing. He is floored by the guttural way she cries out when he takes her. She hates herself for comparing him to Ron and making a favorable judgment in his favor. He does not touch her carefully, as though she is fragile and he might break her. Instead he treats her as though _he_ might break if he ever stops.

He hardly spares a thought for the girl who waits for him at home. He thinks with a vague sort of indifference that he cannot quite remember how Astoria smells, what shade her hair takes in the sunlight, how her smile shapes her face. They are indistinct and Hermione is blazingly real. She always has been.

Afterward she wants to sink into a churning pit of guilt and never emerge. Instead she reaches out to him and they do it again.

* * *

May 2nd, 2004 – 11:06 pm

"What are you doing here?" someone whispers in the ear of Hermione, who does not look anything like Hermione.

He has performed such an extensive number of transfigurations upon himself to arrive at an admittedly impressive result that she does not recognize him. Even his voice sounds different. But then, she has done the same. She is the double of the renowned Millicent Bagnold, down to the color of her eyes. He is Salazar Slytherin. The unpleasant thought occurs to her that they have made it this far because they have spent the last months cutting themselves off, confiding in no one, to such an extent that nobody knows for certain whether they are even here.

He seizes a passing tray of toffee éclairs and she glares at him in annoyance.

"I could ask you the same," she hisses. "Or I could just unmask you, since it's hardly as though you need the prize money."

An unexpected emotion flashes across his face, throwing her off balance. For a moment he almost seems hurt, which of all things she cannot fathom.

"Is that how it is, then?" he asks in a rigid sort of tone.

"We've said all there is to say," she tells him quietly. "Why can't you just leave me be?"

His breathing has become shallow; his nostrils flare. "Maybe I'm not done with you."

"That's not up to you," says Hermione, taking her opportunity as a group of waiters walk by and stepping into their midst. By the time they have passed she has vanished.

* * *

July 8th, 1999

Making an impact at the Ministry is a much more arduous task than Hermione had anticipated. She graduates from Hogwarts with nine Outstanding NEWT's and the Barnabus Finkley Award for Exceptional Spellcasting, and joins the Goblin Liaison Office with high hopes of improving interspecies relations. Her detailed, painstaking reports are largely ignored by her superiors, who fancy themselves too busy with more important matters benefiting Wizardkind to listen to suggestions from a junior assistant. She applies herself, determined that her voice will eventually be heard if she puts in enough time and effort. After nearly a year, her patience begins to waver.

Harry is a shining star in the Auror Office. She is delighted for his well-deserved success, and wildly jealous. Ron comments frequently on the long hours she spends at the office, remarking with a forced lightness that betrays his dismay that he hardly remembers what his own girlfriend looks like these days. When she makes an effort to spend more time at Grimmauld Place, where he is rooming with Harry while she stays with her parents to help them readjust to their former lives, she finds him occasionally affectionate, but often moody and sullen. Knowing what causes these extremes in temperament, she is as patient as she can manage. She sometimes thinks privately that her reserves of patience will soon run entirely dry.

In early winter Hermione hears from a colleague that Draco Malfoy has been missing for several months. She is startled by the devastation she feels. It is the same every time a new casualty surfaces in the headlines of the _Prophet_, she tells herself, because the death toll ought to have ground to a halt when the war did. But every so often the last Death Eaters remaining on the loose claim another victim, and she feels as though the air has been kicked from her lungs each time. Still, this time is different somehow; it is even worse. She does not sleep for nearly a week, and Ron is at a loss, and he makes vain attempts to pull her from the trenches of her misery. He hires Winky on as a House Elf and pays her absurd amounts of gold and forces her to take extended holidays. He comes to Hermione at night and makes love to her tentatively, but that part of their relationship fizzled slowly almost a year ago, because it was the same, always the same routine, and sweet, guileless Ron could not for all the world be made to pick up her signals that she would have liked things to be otherwise.

She recognizes later on that she should have been more appreciative of his efforts. But what's done is done and she cannot bring herself to apologize for feelings she cannot control. Merlin knows Ron has never offered her a decent apology for leaving her behind during their search for Horcruxes, though he had practically crawled all over himself apologizing to Harry at the time. The reason being, she suspects, that Ron regrets abandoning Harry but does not feel he was unjustified in his jealousy as concerns her. She dislikes herself a little for thinking this, but she also knows deep down that she is right.

Hermione's bond with Harry is tested as the months advance. She has always felt an unfailing loyalty to Harry, whose goodness even in the face of a lifetime of neglect and misery have shone like a beacon for her in her darkest hours. However as Harry's life fills up with continuing adventure hers stagnates, and though he stops to chat enthusiastically with her when they meet in the corridors at work his visits to her on weekends are few and far in between. When he does drop in he speaks of his plans with such a sense of peace that she is stunned. Of course, she reminds herself, Harry has known death. He has transcended such mundane things as fear.

Just as the summer months begin filling her with a languorous sense of apathy, Draco's reappearance is abruptly announced. As much to her own surprise as to his, Hermione finds herself running up as he enters a lift and taking a place at his side.

"You've been gone a while," she says without preamble as he gapes incredulously at her.

"Unspeakables are required to erase all traces of their existence for one year prior to training," Draco replies stiffly. "No contact with anyone. It's a test of sorts. I would have thought you'd know that, Granger."

"I—" She _had_ known it. It had simply not occurred to her that he might choose such an occupation. She had always thought him the type to vaunt himself as a philanthropist. It is a novel feeling, to be so drastically wrong about something.

"Granger," he says quietly before exiting the lift, leaving her alone with her stomach squirming in a disconcerting way.

That evening she steals into the Auror Office's overflowing storage room, where all manner of confiscated bric-a-brac is kept once it has been ascertained not to harbor any particularly dark properties. She finds Draco's _Nimbus 2001_, taken by Ron in a raid following the war, and owls it back to him anonymously. She knows that he will know where it came from.

* * *

April 11th, 2001

It happens far more often than it should. It should not happen at all.

Hermione and Ron move into a small London flat together in a haphazard, almost resigned sort of way, as though their futures are dull and predecided. But Ron is away increasingly often as he travels to Paris and Hogsmead to help George expand the newly reopened Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. To be certain, George needs and deserves support. A small and very selfish part of Hermione's brain asks, however, whether she does not deserve support as well. Ron's letters from abroad are sweet and simple and oblivious to her distress. He speaks of small endeavors: plans to see the Chudley Canons play in Devon; new joke products he has designed for the shop; how he will take her to Diagon Alley for a long overdue evening out when he returns. Hermione dreams of bigger things: making a difference in the magical community; introducing SPEW to the Ministry; someday campaigning for a seat on the Wizengamot.

Her Order of Merlin, First Class sits in a kitchen cabinet, mocking her. She feels like a husk of her former self. The only time she feels anything different is when she meets with Draco.

She meets him in seedy pubs and back alley Inns, in distant wooded parks and even Muggle neighborhoods. Not at her flat and never, ever at his Manor. She is aware that he has recently become engaged, and to her shame she cannot muster the will to care. She feels an enormous amount of guilt about Ron, but somehow her two realities—the one in which she works herself tirelessly for indifferent Ministry snobs and waits dutifully in a dingy flat for one-page letters from Ron, and the one in which Draco Malfoy can make her scream and remind her of the myriad ambitions she will someday accomplish if she can just find something to pull her through—are so different that she can almost regard them as wholly separate factions of her consciousness. And then of course, when she is with Draco, she can never think of much at all.

For a long time he is not gentle. He tears her clothes and grips her tightly, possessively, and she hopes he will never stop. She begins to see that she is in trouble when he enters her office in the middle of the day with a scorching look in his eyes, seals her door with magic, and has her right on her desk. After that it is a quick descent into frenzied meetings in empty corridors that could so easily result in absolute catastrophe if they were caught.

He silences her half-hearted protests every time. He cannot stop himself. The only way he is able to get through his mother's diatribes when she corners him to discuss wedding plans is by picturing Hermione, flushed and panting against him. One day while Weasley is abroad he sends her a note, and when she does not respond within twenty minutes he turns up at her door. He ignores her remonstrations and pushes past her into her flat. The pictures of her with Weasley sitting on the shabby mantelpiece make him sick with rage, and he turns with bitter words in his mouth which die on his tongue when he catches sight of her expression.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "Never mind."

"What is it?"

"I—It's S.P.E.W. It's in trouble. I haven't been able to raise as much in the way of funds as I'd hoped and my proposal for a shared representative committee has been rejected twice by Goblin Liaison so I suppose I'm about the reach the end of my rope."

The absurd things she cares about... He wishes he could still hold mere principles in such high esteem.

"I've got told to spare. How much do you need?" he asks, keeping his face as indifferent as possible.

"And how would I explain that?" she replies shrewdly.

She is thinking of Weasley, always Weasley. Instead of the usual cold contempt he feels a painful swooping in the pit of his stomach and is seized by a savage desire to wipe Weasley from her brain.

She has noticed the way he is looking at her and she seems taken aback, even disturbed. He wipes his face carefully blank, but it is too late.

"I want to—I don't think I can do this anymore," she begins.

He erases her stuttered explanations by kissing her and she shudders. Her protests are lost but she is still tentative, still reserved, and he is petrified that this will be the last time. He takes his time, kissing her slowly, lowering her slowly onto her bed. He stops to memorize every movement, every angle, every sliver of moonlight on her skin until she rolls her head back and sighs in that way that makes his whole world sway precariously on the verge of some vast and incredible precipice. When she arches up and kisses the place on his arm that is marred by the Dark Mark, that hideous relic of all his old mistakes, he knows he is truly lost.

Afterward she says, "This can't happen anymore."

"Why now?" He feels cold. Every cell in his body is screaming in panic, but he keeps his eyes fixed on a crack in her ceiling, unmoving.

"You're engaged."

"You don't care about that. _I_ don't care about that."

"I'm with Ron."

He swallows painfully. "I don't care."

"Yes you do."

She looks at him knowingly. She is right—she is always right.

"Because you care about _him,_" he says tightly, still glaring at the ceiling.

There is the briefest of pauses before she says, "I do."

Abruptly he stands and begins to dress.

"I'm going to Egypt," he says tonelessly.

"Egypt?"

"On an assignment. Could be gone a year, could be more." He was offered the assignment months ago, and had never even considered it until now.

"I—Good for you."

He thinks he must be imagining the reluctance in her voice. Draco steals out of the flat without another word. He does not see her again for fourteen months.

* * *

May 2nd, 2004 – 8:15 pm

The Ministry of Magic service entrance is deserted. The brunt of the evening's guests have already arrived and are gathered inside. Ron Weasley saunters down the alley dressed in patched orange and maroon, a broom under his arm and a troubled expression on his face, when he is seized suddenly from behind and thrown against a wall with a wand pointed at the crook of his throat. With practiced ease he draws his own wand in a flash and ducks aside, but his opponent is too fast. He finds himself thrown back at the wall and held there with magic, so that he cannot move his arms or legs.

"What the _hell_—" he growls, but a cool drawl cuts him off.

"Evening, Weasley. Thanks for stopping to hear me out."

"Malfoy!" Ron spits, struggling against the spell.

Draco draws back his hood. "Keenly deduced. Now be quiet, will you? I'm not here to mug you—I'd probably wind up poorer than before."

Ron lets loose a series of unutterable words that make Draco raise one eyebrow coldly.

"Stimulating as I find your conversation, Weasley," he says, "I'm here because I have a... proposition."

"Well you can shove your proposition up your—"

"It _entails_ your cooperation for all of four hours, and I assure you it would be most illuminating," Draco interrupts. When Ron says nothing he adds, "It involves H—Granger."

Ron scowls, but for the first time curiosity flickers in his eyes.

"There we are," says Malfoy silkily, flicking his wand so that Ron is abruptly released and crumples to the ground in a heap. "I'll go on, then, shall I?"

* * *

June 30th, 2002

The next time it happens is because of a book.

In Draco's absence Hermione throws herself into giving her life with Ron a chance. She attends painfully boring Quidditch games with him and appreciates his determined involvement in S.P.E.W. Together with Harry they manage to rescue S.P.E.W. from oblivion, though Hermione suspects both boys are doing this more for old times' sake than because they actually believe in her cause. Slowly, systematically, Kingsley Shacklebolt begins to eradicate the corruption of the Ministry's old regime, and Hermione finds her superiors more responsive to her proposals. She is unexpectedly promoted when the senior undersecretary to the head of the department takes his retirement to pursue Doxy breeding.

Harry and Ginny get engaged and Bill and Fleur give birth to their second child. Percy makes a self-announced splash at the Department of Magical Law enforcement and Ginny is recruited by Pride of Portee. Thanks to Harry and Hermione, Arthur Weasley discovers how aeroplanes stay up.

Hermione wishes desperately that she could forget Draco. She should be able to forget him, with three thousand miles between them, but instead she feels his absence every moment of the day. She wishes desperately, too, that she did not long for his touch with every fibre of her being.

Ron buys her expensive, tasteless jewellery and brings home a tabby cat named Stubby Boardman who hates Crookshanks and begins to drop hints that he envisions himself having as many children as there are players in the Chudley Canons. She is vaguely horrified by the idea that he expects her to turn into his mother before the decade is out.

She buys Ron a complete set of Cassius the Daring's autobiographies for his birthday after learning from Ginny that he is arguably the most famous Quidditch player of all time. And because they each span eight hundred pages and the covers are plain black without illustrations, she finds them a few months later propping up a leg of his desk at the Ministry.

That night, out of nowhere, they are having a blazing row the likes of which has not happened since their Hogwarts days. They hurl hideous, hurtful things at one another that they instantly regret but cannot take back. It is in this instant that Hermione realizes, with a shock so great she staggers backward as though burned, that Ron has been right for a long time. There has always been something between them. But it has certainly not been Harry or Hogwarts or the Ministry. It is not even Draco. It is _them_.

"What, are you leaving?" Ron asks, his ears turning an alarming shade of scarlet as she stumbles towards the door. "This is real life, Hermione, you can't run off to the library for answers."

"No," she spits back, hurt. "Running off, that's your job, isn't it?"

Ron's face crumples and Hermione immediately wishes she had not said it. He is angry now.

"Excuse me for wanting a minute's peace away from _Miss Know-It-All_ once in a while," he says, and she knows very well that he does not mean it. It does not matter.

Hermione tears out of the flat in a blind rage and turns into crushing oblivion as soon as she reaches the Disapparition point in the lobby. Flustered as she is, she reappears over fifty yards from her intended destination and splinches herself painfully. She yelps as she emerges on a cobbled side road in Knocturn Alley with a ribbon of flesh missing from her side near her ribs. Cursing, she limps into a nearby pub that makes the Hog's Head look like the pinnacle of cleanliness.

"Vodka, neat," she tells the one-eyed barman, ignoring the other patrons as best she can. A glass of murky liquid is shoved at her, and she peers at it dubiously.

"Eight Knuts," grunts the barman.

Hermione reaches impatiently into her pocket and a lump rises in her throat as she realizes that she has left her change purse at home.

"I don't—" she falters as the barman leans threateningly over the counter.

A pale hand slaps the requisite bronze next to her glass and Hermione looks up, somehow knowing what she will see and still managing to be surprised.

"Granger," says Draco in that cool voice that immediately sends shivers up her spine.

"You're back," she breathes.

"Unfortunately."

The shock of his appearance has momentarily made her forget her injury but as she shifts away from Draco pain shoots violently across her side and she winces, grasping the edge of the counter for support. Draco stands at once and looks at her sharply.

"Splinched," she says briefly. There is blood soaking through her jumper. She picks up the glass and makes for the door, but her head swims so violently that she almost falls back against the bar. She must have lost more blood than she thought. Draco, of course, is there to catch her.

"Don't..." she is not certain what she means to say. _Don't touch me? Don't let me fall?_

He ignores her and steers her outside, where she lifts up her jumper and feels goosebumps prickle her skin as the cool night air envelops her.

"Oh _hell_, Granger!" Draco snarls, examining her with horror. Something niggles at the back of her mind, and she becomes aware that he has started calling her 'Granger' again. He has detached himself completely, then. He has shut her out.

She hates it.

Hermione pours some of the questionable vodka onto her side to sterilize the injury and swears under her breath at the stinging sensation, a rare occurrence. She trembles uncontrollably as she reaches for her wand to cast a healing spell, and then Draco's hands are sliding down her arms to steady her, settling on her hips. He moves his thumbs in slow circles over her stomach and her eyelids flutter closed for a moment as her heartbeat slows its erratic rhythm. He knows exactly how to calm her.

"_Calisseum indanteo,_" she murmurs, twirling her wand in a complicated pattern, and the wound knits itself before her eyes, leaving nothing but a faint white scar. He does not remove his hands, but the cold is pouring in more insistently and with it reality has arrived.

"I have to go."

"Then go," he says.

"I am."

Neither of them move.

* * *

May 2nd, 2004 – 5:49 pm

Hermione screeches, a high-pitched, despairing sound, and throws a scroll of parchment on the kitchen floor.

"What is it?" asks Ron.

Fighting tears and losing soundly, Hermione turns to him and waves her wand, sending the parchment shooting in his direction. He reads it and groans, running a hand through his hair.

"Pilkerton says if I can't make a payment by Monday they're going to close down the S.P.E.W. offices for good," she says unnecessarily, her lip trembling.

"You know Harry's offered—"

"I can't keep taking loans from Harry if I want to run this thing legitimately. It doesn't work that way. I need to raise the money today. Oh, and I've got all this work to do for Chiswick, I can't possibly..." She trails off, a faraway look coming into her eyes.

Some miles away Draco Malfoy is pacing the floor of his bedroom, dictating a letter to a self-inking quill. He runs his fingers compulsively through his hair as he walks and kicks stray robes and shoes out of his way with an impatient huff.

"Attention Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures: The following is on the subject of the accounts established in Cairo in the year 1996 under the supervision of one Martin Pilkerton..."

* * *

June 30th, 2002

Still neither of them move.

"I have to go home to Ron," Hermione murmurs.

Draco makes a convulsive motion and jerks his hands away. "Buried under the pyramids of Giza for a year and I come back to more about _Weasley._"

"Don't."

He smiles a purely mean smile and quite suddenly spins her around so that her face presses into the cold, damp stone of the pub wall. The cobbled street is deserted and not even the glare of starlight can penetrate the darkness of the Alley. The air smells of petrichor and old magic and electric, blazing desire. He presses into her and his teeth graze her ear. He whispers furiously even as he lifts the hem of her skirt and fists his hand into the fabric.

"I did every damn thing I could to forget you," he growls, tracing patterns along the inside of her thigh. "I left the country. I didn't want your face to be the first thing I saw on the night of my return, but _here you are_, aren't you?"

"Please," she says, and what she is pleading for she has no idea.

"Every bloody thing I could think of, and you're still here. You're still talking about _him_. So _how_ do I get him out of your head?"

He thrusts into her and she is no longer aware of what she is saying—_pleasepleaseplease_—or hearing or thinking. It is dark but she has never questioned her safety less: not when he is making it clear that he wants her so, so, so much. Nothing else in the world can touch her.

The following morning Draco marches into Malfoy Manor and takes back his mother's family ring from Astoria, refusing to offer any sort of explanation. Then he Apparates to the Ministry before his father can grow catatonic with rage, and spots Hermione's face across the Atrium as he strides into a lift. For a moment there is no one else in the room but them.

He stops by the office of Pilkerton, an old family friend, on his way to his Department—recalling Pilkerton's great interest in Draco's expedition to Egypt due to his enthusiasm for ancient treasure and jewels, and thinking perhaps to have the value of his mother's ring appraised—and finds it empty. On the desk are strewn a number of files, some bearing _her_ handwriting, others Pilkerton's in a foreign language he recognizes well. Curious, he utters a quick "_Geminio,_" and steals away with the copies tucked under his arm.

* * *

January 4th, 2003

Harry and Ginny's wedding, much to their chagrin, is a grand affair. Though Harry manages to keep out most of the press, hundreds of guests still pour in from all across the country. Hermione is Ginny's maid of honor and Ron is Harry's best man and as they stand at the front of the assembly she sees them as they were years ago, before the war—before the Triwizard Tournament, even. Back when they were simply three of the best friends ever to walk the halls of Hogwarts. This, above all else, is what means the most to her. More than S.P.E.W. and her relationship with Ron and her ambitions for the future.

She and Ron are on unusually excellent terms that day, spurred on by the happiness of their friends. After the reception, when the couple has departed for their honeymoon to loud trumpeting sobs from Hagrid and Molly Weasley, they go home to chat animatedly about old comforts; visits to Hagrid's Hut, the Christmas decorations in the Great Hall, the DA. They fall into the playful dynamic of their summers at the Burrow when Harry was not yet around to occupy their attention. They play Wizard Chess and she suspects that he lets her win. They are like old friends and she is—wonder of wonders—_happy._

At the party for the first anniversary of Harry and Ginny's wedding, slightly marred by the pestering presence of Rita Skeeter, Ron takes her aside and asks her to marry him. She sees very clearly that this is not the intemperate, irascible, broken man from the days following the war. This is the Ron she grew up with, and somehow it does not matter. Once, not too long ago, it would have done. But they are past that now: she is not seventeen and susceptible to the pages of _Twelve Failsafe Ways to Charm Witches _anymore.

She is not even so very affected by the emerging notion that she has spent several years dedicating herself to the _memory_ of love, rather than to Ron himself.

She tells him _not now_ and he looks so thoroughly taken aback that she wants to tear her hair out for a moment. He really has had no idea how deep her doubts have run all this time. He asks whether it is because she is busy with the Ministry, with S.P.E.W., with researching Wizengamot charters, with helping Harry research Teddy Lupin's emerging Lycanthropic traits. She is weak enough to let him think that it might be all these things.

She sees very little of Draco in the months following the anniversary party. She finds a picture of herself with Ron in the Potters's garden, no doubt taken by that plague Skeeter, splashed over the front page of the _Prophet_, and wonders if Draco might have seen it and drawn his own conclusions. She stoops to timing her arrival to the Atrium in the mornings with the precise moment she knows he will appear, and to walking conspicuously past his Department several times a day despite its being ostentatiously out of her way.

He gives no indication that he is at all enticed by her tactics. Yet sometimes she catches him looking at her with the same hungry intensity he did that night he came to her flat before going to Egypt. She wonders whether he might be trying to teach her some sort of lesson by depriving her of his company, and stubbornly resolves not to let him know she is affected—so very affected.

Sometimes, however, she catches herself looking at him in that same hungry way.

* * *

April 28th, 2004

A week before the seventh annual Masked Ball at the Ministry Ron asks Hermione to marry him again. This time he does not take her vague, hedging refusal so lightly.

"I don't understand what the problem is," he says fretfully, looking up at her with a blank incomprehension that reminds her of the Yule Ball. He is there, and he is asking—without fanfare, without artifice, without reference to her own apprehensions—so why should she not accept?

Certainly Hermione has no interest in fanfare. She does wish, however, that he had a better grasp on what constitute her preferences. Perhaps then he would not have asked her first in the middle of a crowded party filled with cameras, and next abruptly in their kitchen while she is attempting to charm away the moldy cheese that stuck to the ceiling as a result of his last experiment with switching spells.

"I know," she says helplessly.

He ends up storming out and spending the night in Godric's Hollow at the Potters's new home, though Harry assures her hurriedly through the Floo grate that he will cool down in time and that she need not worry too much about it. Ominously, she finds that she is _not_ worried.

For no reason that she can exactly pinpoint, she Apparates back to the pub in Knocturn Alley where she splinched herself and sits at the bar in silence for a long time, perhaps waiting for someone else to appear. But she is the only patron, and after an uncomfortable interval she departs, feeling silly.

The scar on her side tingles as she steps outside onto the cobbled street, sending a shiver that is not entirely unpleasant racing over her skin.

* * *

May 3d, 2004 – 12:00 am

He draws his wand to unmask himself at the last moment, and Hermione does not know what to do. Should she act shocked and exclaim "Malfoy!" incredulously along with the rest of the assembly? Should she claim to have known who he was all along in hopes of being awarded the entirety of the prize money, and in so doing admit some manner of connivance with him? Yes, that is what she will do. She _will not_ relinquish S.P.E.W. for any reason. She needs that money.

Salazar Slytherin melts away just as thousands of gold streamers come cascading down from the vaulted ceiling, temporarily hiding his face from view. When the streamers fall away there is a stunned silence from the crowd, followed by much bemused muttering.

Near the back of the room Harry frowns and says, "No, that can't be right."

Millicent Bagnold waves her wand and becomes Hermione once more, and there is an outbreak of cheering. Oblivious, she steps forward like a sleepwalker and approaches her companion on the dais. His bright red hair and blue eyes have been restored. He will not look at her.

"_Ron?_" she says. "I thought..." Then suddenly she is hit with dawning comprehension. He has tricked her.

"I know what you thought."

His eyes meet hers without bitterness, but with a resigned sort of detachment. She throws her arms around him.

"Oh Ron," she whispers in his ear, "I wish you nothing, _nothing_ but happiness."

He nods but pushes her away from him, gently. He is not quite all right yet, but someday he will be. Because no matter what, after all they have been through with Harry, they are unbreakable. Across the Atrium Harry is looking at her calmly and without judgment, with his head tilted slightly as though he is trying to understand something. He gives her a brief half smile, and after returning it she runs from the room.

* * *

Draco is sitting in her office when she arrives. It is much bigger than the closet sized room she had before, and the roof has been fortified in case of accidents upstairs. It is torture to wait but he sits impassively with his feet resting on her desk and his arms behind his head, a picture of insouciance.

He sees in her eyes when she flings herself breathlessly through the door that she knows everything. Of course she does. He has never met anyone with a mind quite like hers.

"You tricked me," she says, looking poised to be quite upset.

"Into letting Weasley know how you really feel. Yes, how nefarious of me."

"Why didn't you just tell him?"

"He couldn't have heard it from me. The words wouldn't have gone through his thick skull."

She eyes the files in front of him. "Why weren't _you_ at the Ball?"

"I was busy." He splays the files out on the desk. "Had to catch up with my correspondence. This bloke Pilkerton—I think you know him, as he's been trying to foreclose on your 'Save the Gremlins' organization for years—now Pilkerton, for example, writes the most interesting letters. Especially since I noticed a gaping hole where sixty-eight thousand Galleons in Ministry funds used to be during my time abroad, all funnelled into phony accounts in Cairo under the guise of foreign relations."

"You're—you're blackmailing him?"

"Blackmailing a man who used the war to steal thousands of Galleons intended for relief aid to families affected by Dementor attacks? Yes, I am."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Boredom. You'll be happy to know that the way ahead is clear for S.P.E.W., though."

She swallows, and his eyes trace the movement in her throat. She is right there. She is so close.

"Did you do all this to help me win back S.P.E.W.?" she asks quietly. "Because you knew I wouldn't accept help if you offered it?"

"No." He strides up to her until they are inches apart. "I don't give a damn about S.P.E.W."

"Oh."

"I did it all for you." It is perhaps the most difficult thing he has ever had to say, because she can walk away if she wants to. She can listen, and choose not to believe, and leave him with nothing.

Instead she smiles a smile he has not seen on her face since their school days. A small, sly, genuine smile, and his control is shattered to bits.

He kisses her, he kisses her, he kisses her. He had forgotten how empty his world was without this, just this one little thing. He kisses her and then draws back because he wants to commit her to memory in case she decides to come to her senses. She shudders involuntarily and leans into him.

"Go on and tell me all the reasons why you have to go," he challenges her.

She grins. "I don't want to talk."

"That's a first."

She silences him with another kiss. She tastes as good as he remembers—no better, so much better. His hands come to rest at the nape of her neck and the crook of her back, a perfect fit. And he knows he will never let her go.


End file.
